When Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie unveiled Silverlight at MIX07, he vowed that it would be a cross-platform technology. It appears as if the software giant is making good on that pledge: SD Times has learned that some of Microsoft's top developers have provided technical guidance for a Linux implementation of Silverlight.

Miguel de Icaza, vice president of develop platforms for Novell and leader of the Mono project, said that Microsoft offered up its opinion and guidance on how to build a Mono-based implementation of Silverlight that runs on Linux. Microsoft is also soliciting contributions to the Silverlight platform from the open-source community, according to de Icaza. Scott Guthrie, general manager within the Microsoft Developer Division, pulled Icaza aside during a Microsoft workshop on dynamic languages to collaborate on Mono's "Moonlight" implementation of Silverlight, Icaza said, adding that the Moonlight project was strongly inspired by Guthrie's recommendations.